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Anyway! So many great picks here. Bravo! Here are my reliable go-to films

The Fugitive. “I didn’t kill my wife!” “I don’t care!” The detective work, some of the best ever use of flashbacks, the banter, the narrow escapes, it’s all just so well done. Of course, then they tried so hard to turn Gerard and his team into the center of a franchise, but US Marshals just… wasn’t as good, Snipes and RDJ notwithstanding. (I still kind of like it, but not the way I love The Fugitive.)

Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. My first introduction to this was thanks to HBO running (and running, and running, the way they did back in the 80s) a chopped up dub called Warriors of the Wind. For which… I may still have a VHS copy, which will offend every anime purist who sees this. (But it has the best line! “Teach these insurgents a lesson in crowd control: Drop a bomb on them.”) It’s a beautiful, imaginative, heartwarming, creative, meaningful movie and it carries me away every time I watch it, which I do at least twice per year.

Chronos. That would be the IMAX film by Ron Fricke, better known for the cinematography on Koyaanisqatsi. Which is… arguably a better and more important film but I can only take so much Philip Glass at one time, and I love Michael Stearns’ score for Chronos much better. Also, this movie’s a lot shorter. So when I need some pretty time-lapse-y goodness, this is my go-to. I’m SO glad it finally came out on Blu-Ray, since my first viewing was when it arrived at the Pacific Science Center IMAX theater and it deserves a high-def viewing. Great stuff.

And I’ll finish with… the MST3K of Jack Frost. Sure, almost any given MSTie outing is a pick-me-up, but Jack Frost is head and shoulders above any other Russo-Finnish co-production wacky fantastical mythological what-have-you out there. (Honestly, it’s the best MST3K ever, IMO.) “You know, Mike, this must be a magical land… I HATE magical lands.” So quotable, and it never fails to leave me grinning like a loon.